What Is to Be Done About the Bork Nomination

In 1963, Robert H. Bork, then a professor of law, took a stand on the proposed Civil Rights Act of 1964, which required businesses to serve customers without regard to race. In an Aug. 31, 1963, article in The New Republic, he vigorously attacked the act, arguing that it threatened ''a loss in a vital area of personal liberty.'' He described it as a dangerous law, ''by which the morals of the majority are self-righteously imposed upon a minority.'' Mr. Bork's protected ''minority'' consisted of those who practiced racial discrimination, rather than those who were its victims.

In 1984, in Dronenburg v. Zech, Judge Bork of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia took a stand against another oppressed minority. Laws or regulations that impose public morality, he argued in upholding a Navy regulation discriminating against homosexuals, ''come before us not as suspect because majoritarian, but as conclusively valid for that very reason.''

Perhaps between 1963 and 1984 Robert Bork shifted his stance on legislating morality. More frightening, and more likely, his view of morals legislation varies according to the ends of such legislation. When legislation assists an oppressed minority, he opposes it; when it subjugates such a minority, he approves. This bare animus toward racial and sexual-preference minorities has no place in American jurisprudence and certainly deserves no place on the United States Supreme Court. STEVEN M. HABER New Haven, July 5, 1987

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A version of this letter appears in print on July 12, 1987, on Page 4004028 of the National edition with the headline: What Is to Be Done About the Bork Nomination. Today's Paper|Subscribe